D&D 5E What if 5e had 2 types of roles

[Tony Vargas]

OK, here's a try at a possible set of non-combat roles. Conceptual, at this point, no mechanics:



Thinker: Classes with the Thinker role contribute to non-combat challenges by providing information - be it knowledge, observations or deductions. The thinker points out possible solutions, factors that other character may have overlooked, and may be critical in determining how the party overcomes a challenge.

Doer: Classes with the 'Doer' role /act/. In any challenge, they find some action to undertake that moves the party towards success. It may be terribly slow or incremental, but the Doer is always making progress of some sort.

Instigator: Classes with the Instegator role think outside the box. When the party is stuck, the instegator mixes things up, opens new doors to success. The instegator is a risk-taker, a gambler. His contributions may get things moving, but may also get the party in even deeper trouble.

Conciliator: Classes with the Conciliator role try to mitigate the dangers and consequences of a challenge. They may not help the party succeed, directly, but they help the party survive the attempt.



Does that spark any ideas?

 

[KarinsDad]

OK, here's a try at a possible set of non-combat roles. Conceptual, at this point, no mechanics:



Thinker: Classes with the Thinker role contribute to non-combat challenges by providing information - be it knowledge, observations or deductions. The thinker points out possible solutions, factors that other character may have overlooked, and may be critical in determining how the party overcomes a challenge.

Doer: Classes with the 'Doer' role /act/. In any challenge, they find some action to undertake that moves the party towards success. It may be terribly slow or incremental, but the Doer is always making progress of some sort.

Instigator: Classes with the Instegator role think outside the box. When the party is stuck, the instegator mixes things up, opens new doors to success. The instegator is a risk-taker, a gambler. His contributions may get things moving, but may also get the party in even deeper trouble.

Conciliator: Classes with the Conciliator role try to mitigate the dangers and consequences of a challenge. They may not help the party succeed, directly, but they help the party survive the attempt.



Does that spark any ideas?

This is the best list I've seen so far, but it's still pretty nebulous. And, it still runs into the issue of "Is this just another way to organize skill selection?", or "Will there be a lot of rules and/or abilities and/or powers associated with these roles?".

Currently, different classes have generally different powers and abilities, regardless of the role system.

In the case of skills, everyone has the exact same skills to choose from.

So, the superset of skills (17) is less than the superset of powers (hundreds) that even a single PC has eventual selection access to, let alone the many hundreds of powers that a team of PCs has eventual selection access to.

If this is just an exercise in re-organizing the skills for a given PC, that's fine. It's a lot of explanation that some players might blow off and they would still focus on their individual skills. Other players might do something with it.

But, the difference between "Thinker" and a PC with History and Streetwise seems very small. The main difference appears to be if a role of Thinker only includes certain skills, then the PCs are pigeon holed into these roles. Fighters can no longer be brawny with Athletics at the same time they are thinkers with Streetwise without spending additional resources. It's just another way to slice the skill pie.

If instead, there will be skill powers and additional abilities associated with a non-combat role system, then it starts smacking up into ability bloat. The player starts getting additional non-combat abilities on his/her character sheet, hence to keep the game even at the same level of complexity, other combat related abilities and/or powers would need to be removed. If that is not done, the game becomes more complex, especially for novice players.

 

[Minigiant]

The way I see it, the most important part of creating non-combat roles would be finding their HP, Base Attack Bonus, proficiency equivalents.

Two I would expect to see if this is down would be "Skill Strength" and "Skill proficiencies".

A role's skill strength would be the amount of natural bonuses to skills a role has. The High Skill Strength role would bludgeon the challenge with raw numbers like a damage dealer does to an enemy's HP.


A role's skill proficiency would be the amount of strong skills it has of a certain skill type. The High Skill Proficiency role would have Bluff +10 and Intimidate +10 compare to the The High Skill Strength role's Bluff +16. It would function as the backup during party splits or when multiple rolls are needed.

Another attribute could be "skill healing". This would fit the role that offers rerolls and retries. His powers would be the "Excuse me my friend, he hasn't been sleeping well", "Hold on! I got you!", "I think you missed something", guy.

 

[KidSnide]

Thinker: Classes with the Thinker role contribute to non-combat challenges by providing information - be it knowledge, observations or deductions. The thinker points out possible solutions, factors that other character may have overlooked, and may be critical in determining how the party overcomes a challenge.

Doer: Classes with the 'Doer' role /act/. In any challenge, they find some action to undertake that moves the party towards success. It may be terribly slow or incremental, but the Doer is always making progress of some sort.

Instigator: Classes with the Instegator role think outside the box. When the party is stuck, the instegator mixes things up, opens new doors to success. The instegator is a risk-taker, a gambler. His contributions may get things moving, but may also get the party in even deeper trouble.

Conciliator: Classes with the Conciliator role try to mitigate the dangers and consequences of a challenge. They may not help the party succeed, directly, but they help the party survive the attempt.

This is an interesting thought, but I don't understand how this translates into mechanics. What sort of abilities would an Instigator have? How does this relate to skills?

Stepping back a bit, I'm starting to wonder if we're approaching this from the wrong angle. Theoretically speaking, non-combat covers an infinite range of possible encounters, but -- practically speaking -- I wonder if fantasy RPGs encounters fit into a much smaller number of categories. I posit this because, if there are a comparatively small (i.e. less than 10) number of encounter types, that might provide more useful information about roles. After all, combat roles don't come from class abilities -- they come from the different ways characters can interact with combat.

Here's my list of encounter/challenge types:

* Infiltration - entering some kind of secured area with a combination of stealth and guile; bread and butter for Spycraft and Shadowrun style games

* Persuasion - convincing an NPC to do something, often with some combination of rules and role-playing

* Exploration - traveling through an area (typically a dungeon or wilderness), usually to either clear the area of danger or to find a lost item (or maybe just adventure)

* Travel - traveling through an area specifically to get to another area; adventures with travel include D1, the early WoBS games and, perhaps more memorably, LotR. Travel adventures tend to include many encounter types including some obstacles (often wilderness obstacles) of a "get from point A to point B" nature. The skills specific to travel may not be significantly different than the skills specific to exploration.

* Chase - trying to get away or prevent the enemy from getting away is its own type of encounter. I tends to think that chase mechanics (to the extent they require separate mechanics) work best if its easy to fit a chase into a game dynamically, rather than games that are written so "a chase happens here."

* Information - unless you play out a lot of discussions with NPCs, information gathering is often more of a check "do you know X" or "can you learn Y". Information can become more of an encounter (or - to be more accurate - gameplay), when there is a mystery for the players to figure out or maybe just a strategy to work through.

* Riddles and other Puzzles - this is a special kind of encounter where the players try to work through some puzzle (hopefully not too abstracted from the gameworld). In my experience, this type of encounter is usually one where the puzzle solvers work for a while and everyone else waits.

* Free-form Creative - Most modern skill challenges are lumped (incorrectly, IMO) into this category. However, I still think there is a place for one-off encounters where everyone thinks creatively about how to apply their skills. Good examples might be "prevent the village from burning", "help the townspeople across the ravine", "set up obstacles to slow down the advancing horde" or anything else where the PCs might take a wide variety of actions and their particular choices aren't especially important (so long as they are reasonably plausible). I tend to think of these as "montage skill challenges."

* Mass Combat - a small subset of games play out large battles. This is "non-combat" in the sense that it doesn't work with the regular combat rules. Skill challenge theory might classify this as a non-combat encounter, but I'm inclined to say that it usually deserves its own special system.

* Economics - the second special case, an even smaller subset of games include some sort of kingdom management subgame that the players participate in.

-KS

 

[Grydan]

While I'm fond enough of the role system that the idea of having a variation of it for non-combat roles is appealing, I find myself in agreement with KarinsDad here that it may be adding unnecessary complication for little gain.

I think what I'd rather see is something along these lines:

- All characters, regardless of class, get training in the same number of skills.
- All classes have access to all skills.
- Each class would continue to have some skills that they're automatically trained in, though the number would remain low (two seems about right), and again, each class would have the same number.

Assuming no radical departures in terms of how ability scores work, and how they interact with the skill system, you'd still have certain classes tend to be better at "their" skills than other classes.

While anyone could choose to be trained in Stealth, for instance, high Dexterity classes like Rogues would tend to be stealthier.

If that doesn't give enough distinction between classes, there could be a few minor variations added to the mix. Maybe Rogues get an extra +1 for being trained. Maybe Bards get a bonus to untrained skills. Maybe Wizards get a bonus to all of the knowledge skills, while Fighters get a bonus to physical ones. Maybe toss in some rerolls, or (though I think it's a bit fiddly) use the Thief's "natural 20 counts as two successes".

Limiting a class (like the poor Fighter, great in so many other ways, weak in this respect) in the number of skills it can be trained in without expending further resources seems like a vestigial remainder of the trade-off game between combat vs. non-combat utility.

I love fighters, but when it comes to skill challenges, they're the ones most likely to be either trying to sit out, or reduced to Aid Another (which now carries the risk of penalizing the other player's roll). I can't think of any particularly good reason why the Fighter should be trained in so few skills.

Opening up the list for everyone allows for more variation, and for things like the Fighter-Diplomat, the Athlete-Wizard, the Rogue who snuck into the wizard academy's library and read all of the good books, the Ranger who grew up on the mean streets before heading into the wilds, and the Cleric whose religious fervour is intense to the point of being intimidating. All without expending the resources of the feat system, which is overburdened.

Feats could still be used for training in additional skills, or focus in trained ones, for players who like the idea of their characters having a broader or deeper skill set.

(Admittedly, the background system covers one of my areas of complaint by opening up additional class skills, but it doesn't cover all of them.)

 

[Minigiant]

I think instead of focusing on the types of challenge, the mechanics of the challenges should be the focus.

If I were to make noncombat roles, I would do it similar to the combat ones.

The "Striker" would be the traditional skill power gamer. They would be the character you want to make the roll. Variations would include, raw bonus to skills and using passive defense/taking 10 while rushed, distracted, or threatened.

The "Defender/Tank" would have the strongest passive skill use. Overall it would be opposite of the striker and prevent enemy successes.

The "Leader/Healer/Support" Would prevent failure and boost other character's rolls. They could provide boosted aid another and allow rerolls of failures.

The "Controller" would attempt to make the goal easier to reach. This is done by lowering the DCs or number of rolls in challenges. The "controller" would also serve as a backup "striker" by having a wide array of medium strength skills like the current rogue class.


For example, the fighter would have a "striker" non-combat role. The class would get a +X bonus directly to Intimidate (Conversation), Athletics (exploration), Perception (Infiltration) and History (knowledge)

On the other hand, the rogue would be a noncombat "controller". Rogue could use Bluff, Streetwise, or Stealth to unnerve and distract enemies to provide cover for Infiltration and Conversation challenges. They would also have a lot more class skills and be able to do a decent job of History and Intimidate when the fighter is unavailable.

The "defensive" ranger would prevent ambushes, trickery, and starvation with their High passive Perception, Insight, and Nature.

And the warlord would grant second chances with their ability to back up the fighter's or rogue's Intimidate with a retry on failure and a powerful Aid Another.

 

[KidSnide]

The reason to think about types of challenges is that the design needs to focus on what characters actually do, and not on how they interact with the skill challenge framework. Nobody thinks: "I want a character that reduces the number of successes other characters need to win a challenge." They think: "I want a character who is sneaky and sly."

The purpose of identifying the different types of non-combat encounters so we can consider what roles (if any) are present in those kind of challenges and whether any sort of pattern emerges.

Consider the persuasion challenge. If you were creating a game that focused around persuasion challenges, what kind of niches would you build for the PCs? There is a scary character (a bad cop), the emotive character who builds friendship/trust (a good cop), a character that persuades through reason, a character who persuades through emotion, a character who tricks the target, a character who knows relevant information, a character who can find out relevant information, and/or a character that perceives the target's weaknesses. And I'm sure I'm missing some...

I'm just thinking out loud here, but maybe you scrap the skill system for an ability check system. Then you provide just a few buckets (athletics, infiltration, persuasion, perception, knowledge -- one bucket for each type of challenge) each with 10 or so traits like the ones listed above for persuasion. Each character picks 10 traits, but must pick at least one from each bucket. That way, characters can choose their specialties (or lack thereof), but are still guaranteed to have at least one trait that allows them to participate in each type of challenge.

-KS

 

[Tony Vargas]

The reason to think about types of challenges is that the design needs to focus on what characters actually do, and not on how they interact with the skill challenge framework.

I'm thinking that non-combat roles would be supported by non-combat-oriented class features and utility powers, not just skills.

Nobody thinks: "I want a character that reduces the number of successes other characters need to win a challenge." They think: "I want a character who is sneaky and sly."

Yeah. They also don't think "I want a character that takes it on the chin so that others can get in the killing blow" they think "I want a total badass invincible warrior who can take on anyone! woot! No, I want a wizard who can make reality his bitch!" And, then, they eventually simmer down and look at what kind of balanced choices the game gives them.

A non-combat role might be another such balanced choice, or, like source and combat roles, it could be part of the definition/design of a given class. For instance, a Fighter could be a Martial Defender Doer, a Warlock an Arcane Striker Instigator, and so forth... or, a Fighter could be a Defender, and a Doer, Intigator or Concilliator, depending on build...

:shrug:

The purpose of identifying the different types of non-combat encounters so we can consider what roles (if any) are present in those kind of challenges and whether any sort of pattern emerges.

Ideally, every role should be present in every challenge...

However, a challenge is achieving a goal, and how a goal is achieved does not have to be tightly defined in designing the challenge. If the party 'needs to persuade someone' isn't necessarily a goal, it's a means to a goal - that goal might be getting an item, preventing a war, passing through territory, or a host of other things that might be done by persuading someone, or might be done in other ways.

Consider the persuasion challenge. If you were creating a game that focused around persuasion challenges, what kind of niches would you build for the PCs?

It's Dungeons and Dragons, not Demesnes & Duchesses. Certainly, given the current system, you'd look for ways to get each characters social skill - Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Insight, Streetwise, maybe History, involved. And that wouldn't always be easy. Thus the advantage of having defined, broadly aplicable roles.

For instance, using the roles I mentioned above...

Thinker - shares information with the party about the person they're trying to persuade, what he may need/want/fear that would bear upon the course of action the party is trying to push.

Instigator - tries to trick the target into the desired course of action through misdirection or subterfuge, or force his hand by bringing a rival into the picture, or offers a bribe.

Doer - offers a concrete service or other quid pro quo in return for the desired couse of action. Negotiates details when it looks like an agreement is getting close.

Conciliator - presents the party's case diplomatically, performs 'damage control' if the instigator's tricks blow up in his face, realizes with further progress is impossible and withdraws the party gracefully, to try something else later.


Mechanically how do they do that? I haven't really thought it through yet. They might all be using diplomacy, or none, or a skill like diplomacy might not exist in the system. Some roles might be able to alter the basic plot line by fiat - an instigator might be able to dig up an enemy or rival the DM never thought to include, for instance, or a concilliator might have a feature that gives him undefined 'favors owed' that he can collect on in the course of play. It might just all be skills and skill bonuses and re-rolls. :shrug:

I'm just thinking out loud here, but maybe you scrap the skill system for an ability check system.

That might not be a bad step. The skill system still reads a lot like old spells. Skills do very specific in-world things, they try to simulate what a PC is capable of, rather than accomplish defineable (and balanceable) in-game goals.

 

[Minigiant]

Well if there are noncombat roles in 5e, we would first have to choose what type of roles we would prefer.

The traditional one based on the type of challenge
(conversation, exploration and movement, infiltration and detection, knowledge...)

One based on fluff approach
(aggressive "intimidate streetwise", deception "bluff thievery", civilized "diplomacy, history" )

More mechanical approach
(Tony Vargas' roles)

Or based on the aspects of the mechanics
(Specialist, generalist, defensive...)

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm thinking that non-combat roles would be supported by non-combat-oriented class features and utility powers, not just skills.

I think this is going to become a big part of 5E.

Every single PC by design will have a few powers or abilities so that every single player can do something in even the worst designed DM skill challenge.

As an example today, Suggestion.

The Bladesinger in our current group has this power and so, he's at least partially diplomatic.

Now, Suggestion makes some small amount of sense. Sure, I prefer the Suggestion from days of yore where an Arcane PC could really lay the "quasi-dominated" smackdown on an NPC as opposed to a skill check that only slightly influences the NPC, but Suggestion at least makes sense.

The problem is when the Fighter uses an Athletics check to perform a Diplomacy check, or when the Ranger uses an Endurance check to perform a History check, or when the Psion uses a Bluff check to perform an Acrobatics check that the game will go into the Twilight Zone of silliness. And, it will happen. And, players will complain heavily about it when it first occurs. And eventually, everyone will just accept it and even rationalize it, just like they've accepted and rationalized some of the silly game elements of 4E that were added.